Speaker
Description
High-energy hadronic interactions are an important source of uncertainty in studies of the mass composition of cosmic rays. To make progress we either need to better constrain hadronic interaction parameters or find model-independent mass-sensitive parameters. Both of these options can be pursued by studying anomalous air showers in which one or more secondary hadrons carry a significant fraction of the energy and travel an exceptionally large distance before interacting. For a double-bump shower, this distance is so large that the longitudinal profile will have a secondary maximum. When the two components are closer together, the profile can be described by a single Gaisser-Hillas function, but only by using extreme values for the fit parameters. These stretched showers have a significantly longer tail than most other showers. Identification and reconstruction of anomalous showers requires very accurate observations and will for the first time be possible with the low frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array.
In this contribution, we explore the relation between the shapes of the longitudinal profiles of anomalous showers and the underlying hadronic interactions. We demonstrate how observable characteristics of these profiles can be used to test hadronic interaction models and how they can be used to make mode-independent inferences about the mass composition. Finally, we show what reconstruction resolution and total observation time we require from SKA-Low to reach these goals.